Hearts In The Sand
by TapTapAlways
Summary: Beth and Mick at the balcony, episode eight. It might have all turned out so very differently... had he only called back to her, after fleeing the sun.
1. Mick Plus Beth

_I enjoy fix-it-s. We needed this one, too. Or maybe we didn't, actually..._ technically _, but I_ wanted _to write it anyway, so here it is. Do forgive me. It is set at the very end of episode eight, when Beth is left alone in the sunrise on Mick's balcony..._

 _I do not own Moonlight. Even better, I don't own Twilight, either..._

 _TapTap_

Beth swallowed, blinking for several seconds. She had rarely even been so disappointed. It could have been such a _moment_ , and it was ruined. Not because Mick didn't want to kiss in the sun - _vampire_ and all that, she would have _understood_ \- but because he didn't _want_ to. Didn't want _her_ , she supposed. That _hurt_.

Even after everything, it hurt: or maybe _because_ of everything they had gone through, more than despite it. How did Mick see her, now? She had thought that she had _known_ , especially now, but maybe she was dead wrong. How ironic: dead, vampires... she meantally snapped at her own inner voice. _Not_ helpful.

Did he even see her that way? Was she more like a god-daughter to him? She didn't really believe that... so maybe she just wasn't that attractive to him. Her mind racing, she only recognised that just a second had gone by when Mick's voice floated out to her through the curtains and the open balcony doors.

"Beth!" Turning, she looked, but couldn't spot him in there in this light. Of course, sun just having risen, everything had colours you didn't see in full daylight. Or maybe he was just too far into the room, escaping the sun. "I am sorry I interrupted the moment, but in case you missed it, the sun rose! I'd still be _thrilled_ to have that kiss you know, only - inside the blinds!"

Laughing, suddenly happy and her worries gone, Beth headed inside. Not as perfectly set, maybe, but she'd _gladly_ take it.


	2. Josef Plus Baby

_This is such self-indulgent fluff... Then again so is most of my writing on here. I'm_ so _not sorry. Seriously._

 _I do not own the vampires, they're everywhere... so probably Disney._

 _TapTap_

Years later, when their baby daughter was sleeping during the day - all day - and was awake all night like a vampire, much to Beth's endless amusement, she'd ask him about that moment. He'd say that, "I know you thought me all noble and tough and self-sacrificing, back then, but that just hurt too badly. To me, it wasn't very romantic - and our first kiss wasn't something I wanted to _lie_ about, that way."

Then, when Joseph didn't even try to hide his delight in his best friend having a baby (Beth's baby, and a donor Joseph had helped them find) and Mick keeping happily staying up all night (often accompanied by an adorably tender Joseph, much as Beth _pretended_ not to notice it) with her, Beth _understood_. Even before she had that answer, however, she had been prefectly _happy_.

She had come in from that balcony to find Mick waiting in the dark for her, the girl who's (much less benevolent) vampire stalker had just been finally defeated sleeping upstairs, leaving them all to themselves.

She had found Mick pliable and easy to move as she had backed him to a wall. Once out of the (very) early morning sun, he'd been all too willing to let her tilt his head back and kiss until she, at least, the human in the room, had felt her knees go weak.

One night at three am when she nursed their daughter, Mick sitting at the foot of the bed, smiling at them with that adoration she couldn't get enough of seeing whenever he was with her and their child, he had admitted it had made him feel weak, as well. And he didn't even need to _breathe_.

It would take far longer - until their daughter started school, in fact - before Beth finally realised how she _always_ made Mick go weak in the knees; vampire or not.

She had always done that to him, he admitted to an already knowing Joseph one night, when the almost year-old child was sleeping peacefully in her crib.

"Well, man, I've always said you've got it bad," Joseph merely responded, sipping his blood and shrugging elegantly. He no longer sounded particularly chastising, having come to terms with his friend's peculiar romance years ago. Maybe even more so, because Beth was by far more practical in some respects, and had knocked on his door one evening, asking to talk about some, "practical matters, please".

Mick perhaps guessed, but Joseph _knew_. If Mick was not willing to turn her, when Beth reached her chosen age, Joseph had promised to. As for their daughter, it was her choise, but Joseph was pretty sure that when that time came, Mick would never be able to see his child grow old and die. Even when their family grew with the twins, they all knew that did not change.

If nothing else, by then Beth could just do it herself, should she need to. Besides, in that as well as anything else when it came to their family, Joseph was more than willing to help. In _any_ way that he could.


	3. Family

_I like my little fluff-trios this year, it seems. In fact, I seem to have made a trio of them. Ah well,_ I _find my fluff very pleasant._

 _Still don't own stuff that isn't mine._

 _TapTap_

Beth was 27 when she met Mick. She said she'd give it a decade, then she was ready to be turned. When she got pregnant with his child, she had tried to discuss it with him, only for him to avoid the subject. Not one to be thwarted, she had instead reached out to his best friend, Joseph, to get a promise. _He_ had obliged.

She did not know she'd end up there, that night just after dawn when they kissed in the protection from the blinds, taking up their "moment" where it had ended outdoors, but if someone had asked her right there and then, she might have _guessed_.

She would have _known_ , had she not already decided, when she saw her girls grow up so _quickly_. She could never grow grey and leave him behind, knowing their children would grow old in turn, leaving him all alone (with Joseph, alright).

Their oldest daughter figured it out just before her eleventh birthday, and prompty decided that she'd become a vampire too, when she was a grownup. Joseph, of all people, and her had a talk, and she'd exited their kitchen stating she wanted her dad to turn her when she was 27. They left it there.

It was the oldest twin who found out last, and it was lucky, as by that time, she was the _only_ mortal in the family. It was the worst moment of Beth's life, sitting in the raging sunlight with her youngest child bleeding out under her hands, having been hit by a speeding driver who hadn't stopped. Her husband had made it just in time, so close that had he stopped to ask or question, he would not have succeeded.

In the end, Mick had reacted on instinct, and they told their middle child about vampires when their seventeen year old youngest, her twin, was recovering from a transformation that was maybe early, but in the end _successful_.

In the end, a hundred years after the fact, Beth never needed to regret that she had met her vampire, or that she had made the choise to _stay_ with him - in _any_ sense.

Sitting in their parent's large, LA house, a stones-throw from Joseph's bachelor crib and the sea, being technically old ladies did not in any way stop their permanently 27-year-old oldest or her forever 31-year-old little sister from teasing the youngest twin - frozen at seventeen - that she was truly the "little" sister.

Joseph, who had once said that never procreating might be one of his few, forbidden regrets, would always comfort her in that situation, ever the uncle, ever their _protector_. Even when the girls got homes and lives of their own, as children do when they grow up - even if only to a certain age, with vampire parents - they knew they could always come _back_ there, to their family, and they'd be safe. Forever.


End file.
